Google Drive users began seeing the error message "Trying to reach google.com…" at the top of their screens, while others trying to access Drive saw, "The server encountered a temporary error and could not complete your request."

A Google spokesperson told Mashable.com, "We're investigating reports of an issue with Google+ Hangouts. We will provide more information shortly."

Gmail, the free email service offered by Google, has not been affected. The service had over 425 million active users as of June 2012.

In January, Gmail suffered two major outages in just two weeks. Both were resolved the same day for most users.

In the meantime, many users have switched to one of the many other free means of communicating online: